Do you ever stop to wonder why the green ink spilling from your fountain pen in paisleys and undulating hills doesn't seep through the paper like water following hidden seams in the earth, seeping into the streams and rivers then emptying into the ocean? Some questions breed questions, not answers. Or at least that's been my experience. It likely explains my perennially perplexed ...
Poetry
Carpe Mediae Aetatis
Carpe mediae aetatis? What?!?! Think, "carpe diem". Now think, "midlife". Put it together, and the closest literal translation I've come up with is "carpe mediae aetatis". I like this better... Carpe midlife! It has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Carpe midlife. Carpe mediae aetatis. Carpe Diem + Midlife = Carpe Midlife I'm pretty sure my middle school Latin (and even the able wizardry ...
Your Goldfish Attention Span Just Got Shorter
Feeling flighty? Wondering why? Your attention span is shorter than a goldfish! The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a new studyfrom Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain. Researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 ...
Publication Time
My weird-wacky-wonderful manuscript is no longer a manuscript. A far-flung and diverse mix of beta testers have generously offered me "barometer reads", and I’ve wrapped up revisions. A deft designer has alchemized the bits and pieces into a tidy book. And shortly the whole adventure will be pressed into paper. It's publication time. At last it's time to send this wayward child out into the ...
High School
"High School is the place where poetry goes to die." ~ Billy Collins I'm not sure whether or not my high school experience included an attempted murder or poetry. But mine was an unusual and invigorating place, so maybe the poetic anemia of other schools wasn't so much a factor during my four years in a bucolic boarding school in New England. Yes, there were warts, but no poetry fatwa. And that ...
Middling
"Fair to middlin'...," she says, visibly, audibly, olfactorily tired. Like a threshold, I think to myself but say nothing since she looks and sounds unready for clever or even philosophical fat chewing. "How have you been?" I had asked reflexively. "Fine, and you?" That's what I expected if I expected anything at all. But instead, a verbal grimace, "Fair to middlin'." I can't help but prologue her ...